"The climactic revelation, with its link to a dark period in German history, is predictable, and some will be irritated that this essentially straightforward story is told in such a convoluted, even contrived fashion. Yet Schröder’s masterful control of pace, teasing slow-reveal of information and finely attuned eye for detail are enough to let him get away with it"
BEN COREN New Statesman
"Read Adolf Schröder: you will not forget him"
Magazine Litteraire
ABOUT THE BOOK
The young Markus Hauser takes a job with Selma Bruhns, a strange elderly lady who pays him to arrange hundreds of letters in chronological order. For six days Markus works consciously, all the while penetrating little by little into the past of this woman who surrounds herself with cats and memories. On the last day Selma proposes a bargain, a game of cards that will change his life forever.
Written in the style of a crime investigation, this novel pieces together the puzzle of life fractured by war and plunges the reader, along with the characters, into a strange and troubling world.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ADOLF SCHRÖDER was born in 1938 in Bremen. He was a playwright, a scriptwriter and wrote one other novel, The Boy. He lived in Hamburg where he worked as a taxi driver. He died in 2008.
Translated from the German by Andrew Brown
Cover Illustration: Claude Cahun
ISBN 978 1 901285 710
144pp
BEN COREN New Statesman
"Read Adolf Schröder: you will not forget him"
Magazine Litteraire
ABOUT THE BOOK
The young Markus Hauser takes a job with Selma Bruhns, a strange elderly lady who pays him to arrange hundreds of letters in chronological order. For six days Markus works consciously, all the while penetrating little by little into the past of this woman who surrounds herself with cats and memories. On the last day Selma proposes a bargain, a game of cards that will change his life forever.
Written in the style of a crime investigation, this novel pieces together the puzzle of life fractured by war and plunges the reader, along with the characters, into a strange and troubling world.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ADOLF SCHRÖDER was born in 1938 in Bremen. He was a playwright, a scriptwriter and wrote one other novel, The Boy. He lived in Hamburg where he worked as a taxi driver. He died in 2008.
Translated from the German by Andrew Brown
Cover Illustration: Claude Cahun
ISBN 978 1 901285 710
144pp
